Grammarly vs. WhiteSmoke vs. Ginger – The Shootout Comparison!

Recently I've been involved in trying out some of the best grammar checking and proofreading tools like Grammarly, WhiteSmoke, and Ginger. As I've got to try these grammar checkers inside out, I thought of churning out this detailed post comparing the popular grammar checkers.

If you are currently in a dilemma choosing the best grammar checker tool, you are in the right place. I'll help you find the best tool that helps correct most of the grammatical and structural errors you make.

Before diving into the comparison, I would like to say that no automated proofreader apps are 100% perfect and can be a perfect substitute for a human proofreader. Even though your articles are checked by these grammar checking apps, it is essential to proofread them once manually.

Grammarly Vs. WhiteSmoke Vs. Ginger

Grammarly review

Grammarly is used by most of the bloggers, writers, and students in the world. They claim to be the best grammar and proofreading tool in the world. Let's see how they stack up with their competitors.

Overview: The Grammarly works like that of Google Docs or any other online text editing software. There's a web app for the tool, where you can create documents and check for grammatical errors. The grammar engine and also the app in which you create content will be cloud-powered. The errors in the content will be marked as an underline.

To make the tool work seamlessly throughout the entire web, they've also got an extension for Chrome. Nevertheless, they also have an add-on for MS Word, if it's your favorite text editor on the go.

Review of the features of Grammarly

Here comes the important part. It's essential to know what are all the features that the tool comes with. Let's go into detail one-by-one.

Grammarly web app

You may know that Grammarly comes in with free version that has limited error detection capability. The free version is quite good at detecting common typos and most common grammatical errors like incorrect 's' form, etc. According to Grammarly, the free version has the ability to do 150 critical grammar and spelling checks.

Genre-specific writing styles: While writing content on the web, depending upon the topic you are writing , the words you use and the structure of the sentences vary. Understanding this, Grammarly team has developed the option for choosing between multiple profiles like marketing, creative writing, script writing, ESL, job applicants, technical, medical and also blog posts. This feature enables the grammar checker to hunt for grammar and structural errors that are specific for a specific niche and context.

Plagiarism checker: With Grammarly, there's no need of using another software for plagiarism detection. The pro version of Grammarly comes built-in with plagiarism detection engine that compares your piece of content with 8 billion web pages on the web. Nevertheless, the plagiarism checker is not as efficient as that of professional plagiarism checkers like Copyscape or TurnItIn.

Vocabulary suggestion: Based on the content you are writing, Grammarly turns out to be clever at offering your context-specific vocabulary and word choice suggestions. I personally find this feature very helpful as I write more marketing related stuff on my blogs. In marketing right words are the power!

Write anywhere

As I said earlier, the browser extension for Grammarly is also available. This extension integrates with the text input fields that you come across the web, and corrects you on the go. Whether it be Facebook, posts, emails, Tweets, or your WordPress Editor. The surprising thing is that it is even supported by my drag-and-drop content builder!

Grammarly is also available as an add-on for the most popular software MS Word. It, combined with the native word's grammar checking feature almost completely gets you rid of grammatical errors.But the sad thing is that the add-on is not supported by Word for Mac. However, good news is waiting for you Mac users!

Grammarly native Mac app

Realizing that the MS Word for Mac won't support Grammarly add-on, the developers have released a native Grammarly app for Mac users. The app allows you check for the content more productively. Being an owner of iMac and MacBook Air, I found this very helpful. The best part about this Mac app is that you just need to drag-and-drop the file with content in it for Grammarly to proofread and mark the errors. It's as easy as that!

Cons

WhiteSmoke review

I tested WhiteSmoke lately, and I found it as a good competitor for Grammarly. The main USP that WhiteSmoke comes with is that no matter what device are you using, you can access their service.

Features of WhiteSmoke reviewed below

Grammar checker: The WhiteSmoke writer comes with grammar checker functionality that's capable of finding out various errors like incorrect capitalization, typos, incomplete sentences, fragments, missing words and others. Following the same conventions as that of MS Word, the tool marks the typos as red and the grammatical errors as blue in color.

Spell checker: The WhiteSmoke checks for typos in your writings, with the help of a dynamic database of spellings that is constantly being updated with newer words and trend changes.

Style-checker: If there are any errors in your writing style, the tool is very good at spotting them. It matches your writing style with that of dozens of other writing samples and suggests you regarding your writing style. Don't mistake these with grammatical errors.

Punctuation checker: WhiteSmoke also does a great job in identifying the missing and wrong-placed punctuation in your content.

WhiteSmoke translator: This feature is powered by Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) technology. It displays how a translated word should be used in the sentence. Analysing the data that it has collected, it calculates the translations that best suit the context.

WhiteSmoke Everywhere

The best part about WhiteSmoke is that you can access the tool regardless of what platform or device you are using. WhiteSmoke works on every browser like Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera and Safari. They come in the form of extensions or web interface.

Apart from this, the Android and iOS apps for WhiteSmoke is also available checking your grammar mistakes on the go.

Cons

Ginger Software Review

It is one of the old players in the proofreading industry. They claim to correct grammatical mistakes and avoid embarrassing situations and proofread like a real human reviewer does! Let us see.

Like other tools out there, Ginger also comes with a free version that does the job of proofreading pretty well. But premium version tends to do it exceptionally well.

Features of Ginger​

Grammar checker: It also comes with a grammar checker that checks for the common grammatical errors like subject-verb agreement, singular/plural nouns, misused words, consecutive nouns, and also contextual spelling correction.

Spell check: Helps in correcting the typos.

Sentence rephraser: Some times, you write a sentence and think that this could be much better. Seems familiar? Huh? In those situations, sentence rephraser helps a lot for you to come with a perfect sentence to convey what you meant.

Personal trainer: The Ginger, tailors a package of personalized training sessions that helps you learn from your own mistakes. With this, you seldom commit the same mistake in the future.

Text reader: Apart from grammar checking, Ginger takes a leap forward by adopting text-to-speech engine for enhanicng your pronunciation skills. You can let Ginger pronounce the word of your choice in any of the selected accents. It helps you communicate with others just like a native English speaker.

Translator: Helps you in translating the content to various languages.

Ginger for various platforms

Like that of WhiteSmoke, the cross-platform compatibility of Ginger is excellent.

For the Windows, there's a dedicated application that you can make use of. The software is a text editor where you type in the content and the Ginger corrects it.

Unfortunately for Mac users, there are no apps released. However, you can make use of Ginger browser extensions for Chrome and Safari.

For Android, there's a keyboard that lets you instantly correct the grammatical mistakes you commit.

For iOS users, there's an app called Ginger Page that's a text editor which helps you in proofreading what you wrote.

Apart from these, there are also solutions for schools and business use. They offer customized solutions for your every business requirement.

Pros

Context-specific grammar checking

Grammarly extension

Word add-on

Built-in plagiarism checker

Mac app

Cons

Final verdict

According to me, Grammarly is the best tool when it comes to grammar checking and proofreading. It is quite intelligent at detecting the context and genre-specific mistakes that other Grammar checkers lag in. Grammarly is the most popular tool, and tons of people are using it daily, ranging from bloggers, students, and professionals. As it relies on machine learning, the more user-base equals more accuracy due to more statistical data. The accuracy of the tool is increasing day-by-day. The greatest advantages are the Grammarly MS Word add-on and the Mac app. They are only unique to Grammarly.

The only downside of Grammarly is that the lack of smartphone apps. However, if you have the practice of writing your blog posts or scripts on the computer this may not be a problem.

Coming to WhiteSmoke and Ginger they both offer excellent cross-platform support, making them the perfect choice if you are looking to use the proofreading tool across various devices. They both offer well-updated smartphone apps that assist you well while commuting or texting. That's the added benefit. Both of these services don't have MS word add-on or a Mac app.

If you are looking to catch more grammatical errors in your writings, going context specific is crucial. Semantics and linguistic intelligence play an important role here. Grammarly is the tool that excels in these. It also is the only tool that comes with MS Word support and Mac native app.

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I would strongly suggest you to go for Grammarly as it is worth your every penny.

What do you think? Who do you think among Grammarly, WhiteSmoke, and Ginger is the winner? Let me know in the comments section.

DISCLOSURE

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning that if you click on one of the links and purchase an item, we may receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). All opinions are our own and we do not accept payments for positive reviews.

Grammar checkers

Features

Price

Effectiveness

Ease of use

Support

Grammar checkers review

I've reviewed the best grammar checkers and proofreading apps on the web today. I hope you loved it.

Hi Akshay,
Really an interesting article. I am not sure about whitesmoke and ginger. But I am sure about Grammarly, I am using this excellent text editing tools. I think it is the best free text editing service from google. Grammarly is really smart and error free tools that most of the bloggers use. Thanks for your article.

Good comparison between Grammarly vs Whitesmoke, Akshay. I really loved it. Compared to Whitesmoke and Ginger, the Grammarly prices are a bit higher. But I think it's justified as Grammarly comes with Word add-on and genre profiles. I'm presently using Ginger and will surely go for Grammarly in the future.

Glad you loved this comparison between these proofreading tools. The genre profiles available in Grammarly is the best feature for improving the structure of the sentences and it's quite good at detecting niche jargon.

First, i tried the free version of Grammarly. It does help correct some grammar problem . However, it also misses some. I am also using Grammarly premium version from last 6 months and we can check our documents for plagiarized sentences too.

It highlights your passive voice, tell you to correct the form of writing, for example, the difference between Facebook and facebook, sentence structure and errors in the standard practice of commas and apostrophe.

Premium Grammarly is so worth it with a lot of extra features. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for your comment, Anuradha! The free version of the Grammarly catches some of the errors which Ginger free version catches. However Grammarly premium version, blows all the other grammar checker out of the water. This is due to the data they've collected and the machine learning. Grammarly Premium is definitely worth it, especially for a freelancer.

I absolutely vouch for Grammarly and it is encouraging to note that you have reviewed it to be the best one too! However, I use the free version and hence I miss some of the more refined options that a premium version has. Does Grammarly run any discounts or periodic contests? by winning which, one can get access to a premium version?

Thanks for the helpful comparisons. The review, however, would have been much improved by the use of a good proofreading program. If this review displays the outcome of using one of the reviewed products, then they definitely don't work well!!!

Grammarly works very well, but if you have issues, good luck! (did I use correct grammar for that?) They do NOT have a human being you can talk to, but only communicate via email about once every 24 hours. I paid for an annual service but haven't been able to use it for two months, as I have been bantering back and forth with the "customer no service" rep.

How ironic that the very name of the software "Grammarly" is grammatically invalid, incorrect, and goes completely unnoticed by seemingly everyone.
Have any of you people ever pick up and opened an actual dictionary of the English language?

This offers a great summary of those 3 servives. However, one grammar and style tool thats always missed is prowritingaid.com. It supports word,google docs and the website is optimized for smartphone use.

This website, offers more than grammar its priceless and has a free version.

Fix Style Issues

"Writing can be grammatically perfect but still feel awkward and clumsy. ProWritingAid searches out elements like repetitiveness, vague wording, sentence length variation, over-dependence on adverbs, passive voice, over-complicated sentence constructions, and so much more (25 reports in all.)"

I have used Whitesmoke some time back. Good tool, but it got several software faults, it often needed re-installing and my virus-protection software was not a happy with it. At times Whitesmoke acts like a virus.

Their life long license, is not really life long. It is a miss use of the term 'life long'. The license key was sold to me like "you never need to purchase a new license" again. That is incorrect. It is only life long if using the same version of their software. If you upgrade to the next release, you will soon find out you are out of a valid license.

Would I purchase a new license? Well I need something, so the answer is yes.

Question: I need a license I can use on two or tree laptops. Due to security some of my client require that I use a separate laptop when I am on their network. Do I need a license key per laptop? Only one is at use at the same time. Last time I had to purchase two licenses of that reason.

Hi Akshay,
Thanks a ton for your useful comparison. I would love to know how useful the Grammarly Keyboard for iOS and Android is and how does it compare to the PC Web-based version.
If possible, please make a review of that Mobile Version.

As much as I liked using Ginger as an add-in in Word, the program kept popping up where it didn't belong; excel, on-line, and what ever screen I opened, Ginger would appear. I use Grammerly because it works.

Ginger CSRs would not answer a simple question, Does Ginger function in MS Word like Grammarly. I asked three times and they skirted the answer each time. I have to assume the answer is NO! I could never get it to work in Word. Next, I tried to pay for one month and it did not work, not even like the free version. It froze. I asked for a refund and they said they would refund me, but they have not returned my money so far. I had to go thru Paypay and wait for 3 weeks to get a refund.Conclusion: Ginger will find errors or make suggestions Grammarly missed, but CSR is so dysfunctional and uncooperative is answering questions, or assisting customers and issuing refunds, I'd suggest using the limited free version. Avoid the headaches! Or go with Grammarly.

About Akshay Hallur

Hi, I’m Akshay Hallur. The founder of this blog GoBloggingTips. I’m a professional full-time blogger, an internet marketer, and a trainer. I’m here to help bloggers like YOU to create an outstanding blog and earn money from it.